Gerald Seymour - The Journeyman Tailor

He stopped, paused for breath. He watched through the window, his wife hunched over the table, He leaned for a moment on the rake.

Beyond the privet hedge he could just see the head of a man going along their lane. It was fine weather to be out for a walk. He returned to his raking. He set himself to clear the grass and the rosebeds before he finished for the day.

She had knocked sharply and come into his room before he could reply

It was late morning. She wore a thin T-shirt that was creased and not fresh that day and it hung half in, half out of her jeans. Bren saw the reddish blotch on the white of her throat and thought she must have scratched an insect bite.

"You sleep alright?"

"Fine."

"The beds are made for martyrs."

"I slept well."

"I don't know what you're going to do with yourself today… sorry, I'm not about."

"There are no meetings?"

"Don't be too keen…" Again, what he had seen the previous evening, the bright mocking in her eyes.

"Don't I get to meet anyone?"

"This evening, Hobbes. Not till this evening."

"I'd like to go into the city, get some sort of feel for the place."

"There won't be a driver for you. Not on a Sunday."

She said what time he should be back at the house, and what time she would pick him up. He said that he would find a taxi down the road at the hotel, or maybe, if he wanted to be athletic then he could walk the whole way.

"Please yourself, don't wander off too far." The smile was off her face.

Because it had been night when he had arrived he knew only that the house was in the Malone Road. The flat where he had slept was one bedroom, one living room with a kitchen alcove, and a tiny bathroom, on the second floor. She'd gone.

He wore an old anorak and a pair of slacks and good walking shoes.

Bren went down the stairs of the house, and there was music playing from one of the first-floor rooms. In the ground-floor hall he passed a man who looked as though he had come out from the cardboard cities of inner London. The man had four days of stubble, hair that was matted, hands that were grimed, clothes that were torn and filthy, and the man ignored him.

Thirty minutes later, Bren stood in the central square of old Belfast.

So ordinary.

The sun was behind the great block of the City Hall. He saw the banner draped high on the building U LSTER sa ys no. A Land-rover painted in camouflage green drove past him and a soldier protruding through the roof momentarily covered him with the snub barrel of his rifle. He walked through the circular security gates, clattering the steel bars as he pushed them in front of him. He went down a wide shopping street. They were all the High Street names.

Some shops were boarded up, the plywood daubed id graffiti and covered with concert gig advertisements. There were the stores for clothes and furniture and televisions and cosmetics, just as he would have found them anywhere else. He had only seen this street on television, when the fires were burning and the firemen were sprinting forward with their hoses, and shopkeepers were standing on the pavement in shock or in tears. He had never seen the Royal Avenue on television deserted and quiet and ordinary. He turned right, past the shops with the special offers and the travel agents with the cut-price deals and hot bun cafes that were closed, padlocked, shuttered. Ahead of him were the Law Courts. He saw the young soldiers and their sa ngar of sandbags. He was behind the public face of the centre and he went along a road where most of the buildings were derelict, and at the doors that were reinforced with nailed planks he saw the rusted nameplates of solicitors and businessmen who had been bombed into new premises.

In Curzon Street, since joining the Irish desk, he had never volunteered an opinion about the war. Last time round, Charlie had said, "Left to ourselves we could wrap this up in a week, consign them all to the Underground Club." Archie had said, Can’t expect to fight and win if you've a hand tied behind your back,. must fight fire with fire." And Mr Wilkins, muttering under his breath as he passed Bren's desk had said, "Anyone with a solution to Northern Ireland's problems is either demented or merely ill-informed." He’d have an opinion himself, one day, when he came back. He wanted to learn, to make the opinion worth having, He would walk through the city and taste it, smell it.

Twenty minut es later he found there were high block of flats ahead of him, four, five stories, smeared concrete, daubed with slogans, fire scarred. A cluster of youths on the corner of the first block, smoking, watching, lounging. They wore a uniform: ankle boots laced high, faded and patched jeans, denim jackets with pop group logos hand-scrawled on the shoulders and sleeves, cropped hair. He hesitated. He looked across the wide road at the youths, and the youths stared back across the road at him. The Land-rover came down the street from behind him. It braked, swerved towards the pavement. Two soldiers gol out. The soldiers went to the youths. Bren watched. He saw their defiance. They didn't back off, they didn't straighten up, and one of them cleared his throat and spat. He had not seen the second Land-rover pull up behind him.

"You!"

He spun round.

"You… Over here…"

He saw the crouching soldiers, and a rifle aimed at him. He walked towards the soldier. No sweat, no problem, he was…

"Move your arse…"

He stood in front of the soldier. There was contempt in the soldier's face.

"Name…?"

"It's alright, I'm…"

"Last time, name…"

Bren swallowed. He shook his head.

"Your name, arsehole…"

Bren looked him in the face, and looked into the barrel of a high velocity rifle.

"I'm English. I'm a civil servant, and I can't answer your questions."

If you're from the Long Haired Brigade, mate, God help us., Bren reckoned the soldier to be ten years younger than him. The soldier smirked. The Land-rover across the road was loading up. and the youths were left free to smoke and watch and lounge, and the focus of their attention was Bren. The soldier said, ‘’This, old cocker is the unhealthy end of the city. If you’ve no business here, take my advice, piss off out.’’ Thank you " Bren turned, started to walk away.

He heard the laughter, and then the thrust of the engine of the second Land-rover. He pushed up the collar of his anorak. He kept walking, all the way back through the city centre, to the Malone Road.

The rest of the afternoon, not much of it because the dusk came quickly to his room, he lay on his bed and waited for Cathy goddamn Parker to collect him.

The target used two lengths of plywood, one in each hand, to scoop up the leaves and put them into the wheelbarrow. The assault rifle, the tubular steel stock folded hack, was still in Jon Jo's inner pocket. The magazine was in his outer pocket. He watched from beyond the hedge.

The lane behind him was empty. He knew that the target was not regarded as priority. The order was to avoid priority targets who were too well guarded.

The target cursed because the dried leaves spilled from the wheelbarrow onto the lawn again.

He heard the distant call from the cottage.

"Come on, Peter, tea's made. You'll catch your death out there."

"Just coming, darling," the target answered. "One last load."

The target began to push the wheelbarrow across the lawn, towards a corner of the garden where a bonfire smoked through the earlier heaps of leaves.

Jon Jo looked back to his right, up the lane, and to his left, down the lane. The lane was empty. Dusk falling, completing a November Sunday afternoon. The car was a full 150 yards away, parked through an open field gate and hidden by a hedge. He was, at the upper end of the village and on the high ground above the church and the one main road around which the community had formed centuries before. There was a haze of smoke from the chimneys that blurred the setting sun.